Are you excited about NASA’s L-2 destination?

NASA’s next major mission may not be the moon, nor an asteroid nor Mars, but rather to a point about 37,000 miles beyond the moon.

The Orlando Sentinel first reported this about a week ago, and it was confirmed in a report released by NASA’s human architecture team. This report represents a first stab to lay out the space agency’s plan to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit.

The plans call for NASA to build an inflatable facility at the L-2 point beyond the moon — this is one of five LaGrange points in the space around the Earth-moon system that have stable gravity. Which means that if you put an object there it won’t move much, and therefore won’t need much fuel to keep it there.

(NASA)

With a modest increase in its budget, NASA believes an initial construction mission could be launched in about a decade.

So why build something at the L-2 point, besides the value of saving fuel? The report states:

A long-duration habitation capability could support a Lagrange gateway at EM L1 or L2. This facility would provide a destination for exploration systems, like the Orion MPCV spacecraft; a staging point for future missions to many destinations; a crewed, non-terrestrial laboratory for NEA or Mars sample return; and a hub for accessing or servicing systems throughout cis-lunar space.

Astronauts at the L-2 Gateway could also direct rovers on the far side of the moon, allowing them to collect samples and perform other activities of interest to scientists.

(NASA)

Lunar scientist Paul Spudis, who favors human exploration of the moon, is skeptical about the value of such a service:

In a way, this is “make work” for the crew at L-2. The use of astronauts to teleoperate surface robots on the far side of the Moon is possible, but offers no real advantage over their remote control from the Earth. Much is made about the “latency factor” of time delay, but the specific tasks envisioned by these missions (i.e., the retrieval of a few kilograms of rock and soil and the deployment of a long-lived scientific station) could be satisfied by teleoperation with the three-second time lag imposed by the Earth-Moon distance. In contrast, operation from L-2 will experience a 0.4 second lag – shorter, but worth the effort? The completely robotic New Frontiers SPA sample return mission was originally envisioned as controlled from Earth.

Some critics of NASA’s present human spaceflight activities, who have been asking for the space agency to elaborate a timeline for exploration, said there were some positives with the plan. But like Spudis, observers such as legendary spaceflight director Chris Kraft, say NASA should simply return to the surface of the moon.

The mission to L-2, while not what I would like to see is a better step than a mission to an asteroid and Mars. And it does say it involves the rest of the space faring world (ESA etc.)

I believe that if and when we get a change in administrations there will be an opportunity to come to a consensus by involving the Aerospace community: industry, academia and the Europeans, Canadians and Japan and probably Russia. All of these will recommend a return to the Moon, a lunar base and an extended stay capability. It will require a use of all of the present assets such as Atlas, Delta, Arianne and whatever the Russians will supply. And a number of other space vehicles to be used to and from the Moon along with nuclear power plants.

The “exotics” like to throw in the idea of L-1 and L-2 etc. Maybe, but that is not really a necessary feature.The future use of the SLS is the question because it is so expensive to bring about and the operating costs will limit its use. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see it canceled.

The latter point Kraft raises is an important one. None of this proposed hardware is included in NASA’s spaceflight budget, which is largely promised to the SLS — the Orion spacecraft and a rocket to launch it and larger payloads int orbit.

In other words, NASA needs more money to actually do anything with humans beyond low-Earth orbit. It’s difficult to envision NASA getting substantially more money than it presently receives considering the financial challenges the country faces.

So the question is whether an inflatable facility at an L-2 point will motivate the public and Congress to increase NASA’s funding. Hence the original question, I posed: Are you excited about an L-2 facility?